From the RFE/RL Newsroom:
The arrest on terror charges this week of two Iraqis who entered the United States as refugees is fueling sentiment in Congress against the program for resettling refugees from the Middle East.
Legislation to prevent any further resettlement of refugees was considered in Congress last year after the terrorist attacks in Paris, but was set aside when the White House agreed to more limited curbs on visas for people who traveled to Syria, Iraq, Iran, or Sudan.
But on January 8, after two Iraqi refugees were charged with planning terrorist attacks, some legislators called for a revival of the more punitive legislation.
"How many ticking time bombs are we going to bring in in this refugee program without a proper vetting system in place?" Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of House Homeland Security Committee, asked.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Republican-California) urged the Senate to vote on legislation that passed the House of Representatives in November that would require new FBI background checks and other steps before any refugee could come to the United States from Iraq or Syria, where the Islamic State group is based.
Based on reporting by AP and AFP
From AP:
Iraqi refugee's brother shocked by terrorism arrest
HOUSTON (AP) — The brother of an Iraqi refugee who had settled in Texas said he is in shock after learning that his sibling — who had come to the U.S. to escape the violence in their homeland — is now facing charges that he tried to help the Islamic State group.
Federal authorities allege 24-year-old Omar Faraj Saeed al-Hardan of Houston was coordinating efforts with another Iraqi refugee living in Sacramento, California, Aws Mohammed Younis al-Jayab, to get weapons training and eventually sneak into Syria to fight alongside the terrorist group.
Both men remain jailed after initial court appearances on Friday. Al Hardan was indicted on three charges, including attempting to provide material support for terrorists, and faces up to 25 years in prison. Al-Jayab faces up to eight years in prison on charges of traveling to Syria to fight and lying to U.S. authorities about his travels.
Saeed Faraj Saeed Al Hardan, Omar Al Hardan's older brother, said he was surprised by the charges against his sibling because neither Omar nor anybody in their family had ever expressed any support for the Islamic State.
"Nobody likes ISIS at all. Nobody supports ISIS at all," Saeed Al Hardan, 37, who also lives in Houston, told The Associated Press on Friday. Saeed Al Hardan, who speaks Arabic, spoke in English during the interview but also had a friend translate for him.
Al Hardan said he believes his brother is innocent and that his sibling denied wrongdoing during a Friday telephone call from the Federal Detention Center in Houston.
Authorities say Omar Al Hardan and Al-Jayab used social media to discuss their support of the terrorist group. Al-Jayab and Al Hardan communicated in April 2013, and Al Hardan expressed interest in fighting in Syria, authorities said.
Saeed Al Hardan said the FBI showed him copies of pages from Facebook in which his brother Omar had made comments but that there was nothing that indicated Omar was talking to someone from the Islamic State.
Omar talked to cousins and friends on Facebook but he didn't talk to them about the Islamic State, Saeed Al Hardan said.
"ISIS is no good," he said. "ISIS is not Muslim."
Omar Al Hardan and his parents came to Houston in 2009, with Saeed Al Hardan and his wife arriving a year later. The family had lived in Baghdad but their ancestry is Palestinian. The two brothers as well as their parents were born in Iraq.
Saeed Al Hardan, who is Sunni, said his family left Iraq because the country had become too dangerous for them. His family was scared they would be killed and he had several cousins who died because of the violence, Saeed Al Hardan said.
"After Saddam Hussein, no good for anybody in Iraq," he said.
Omar Al Hardan had worked as a limousine driver for the past year and before that had worked in a mechanic shop. He is married and has an 8-month-old son. His brother works in a hotel performing maintenance, is married and has two children.
Saeed Al Hardan said he and his brother are legal permanent residents and that he's applying for U.S. citizenship.
Saeed Al Hardan said with his brother's arrest, he and his family are afraid for their safety. He said his brother's wife and parents have been threatened with eviction from their apartment complex.
That concludes our live blog for today. Please check tomorrow for more news.
The man shot dead in a Paris police station stayed in a German asylum center, our news desk reports:
German investigators say a man who attacked a police station in Paris had lived in a center for asylum-seekers in Germany.
The man tried to storm a police station in northern Paris on January 7, the first anniversary of the deadly attack on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in the French capital.
Police shot and killed the man, who brandished a meat cleaver and wore a fake suicide vest.
German investigators assisting the probe raided an apartment at a shelter for asylum-seekers in Recklinghausen, in the west of the country, on January 9.
Their statement gave no other details.
The news website Spiegel Online reported that the man had already been classified by German police as a possible security threat after he posed with an Islamist State flag at the refugee center.
He reportedly disappeared from the shelter in December.
French investigators tentatively identified the suspect as a Tunisian named Tarek Belgacem. (AFP, dpa)
There has been a call for an urgent security review of how the Paris attacks ringleader took a ferry to Britain, The Guardian reports:
The Home Office is facing calls to launch an urgent review of security at ferry terminals after it emerged the Islamic State commander who planned the terror atrocities in Paris travelled undetected through Dover earlier last year.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud was a wanted terrorist at the time of his visit, in which he was able to visit fellow jihadis under the noses of Britain’s security services and police. While in the UK, Abaaoud also took pictures of British landmarks on his phone.
The shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, has urged Theresa May to hold an urgent review of security at UK ferry terminals. "This adds to the growing questions about about border security at our seaports," he said.
This ends our live blogging for January 10. Check back tomorrow when Joanna Paraszczuk will resume her coverage of Islamic State.
We open this morning's live blogging on the IS group with this item from our news desk:
Starving Families Flee Encircled, IS-Controlled City In Northern Iraq
Reports from northern Iraq say hundreds of families have been fleeing hunger and rule by Islamic State (IS) militants in the city of Hawijah and the surrounding area.
Reports say many have been dying on the dangerous journey in a bid to reach Iraqi security forces, which have moved closer to the city of Hawijah after recent gains against IS militants in other parts of Iraq.
Colonel Fattah al-Khafaji, the police chief in charge of the Hawijah region, said on January 10 that entire families had been walking for two days or more through the Hamrin mountains in freezing whether to reach an area near Al-Fatha.
That is where Iraqi security forces have been receiving and assisting fleeing families every day for the past week.
Hawijah, about 220 kilometers north of Baghdad, remains an IS stronghold but is encircled by forces that are moving in on all sides.
Kurdish Peshmerga forces now hold positions north and east of the city while Iraqi government forces and Shi'ite tribal fighters have been advancing from the south and west.
Unidentified aircraft attacked an IS convoy on January 10 near the Libyan city of Sirte, a resident told Reuters. The account could not be verified.
Sirte is IS's stronghold in Libya and has been under IS control for months as the extremist group tries to expand its presence in the country.
IS militants are thought to be responsible for an attempt January 10 to attack the oil port of Zuetina. Three boats were involved in the attack but were repelled.
The attack came after an assault last week by IS on the major Libyan oil ports of Sidra and Ras Lanuf.